June 19, 2012

... and don't click off before you get to the part where he explains — with brilliant clarity — what he invented. And read the article. I love the stuff about his parents:

When he was in grade school, his father, a civil engineer, bought him and his older brother a plastic model river with running water. The boys would throw all kinds of foam boats and objects down the river and see which ones would drown and how different objects would impede the flow. His parents, he says, never really answered any of the questions they had. Go figure it out for yourself, they would say. “I got really into the scientific method of developing a hypothesis and testing it and getting a result and going back to do it again.”

Do you have the nerve to treat your kids like that? Figure it out for yourself!

I love that kid... and his parents (who follow a child-rearing approach that my parents used).

I think I understand what he invented, and I don;t want to down play it, but it seems pretty obvious once you know nano tubes and antibodies. I get the feeling we are gonna find out later, this has been done. Even if so, it's great for a 15 year old to do it, and to be so driven.

At 15, I was discovering things too, but they were only new to me. Still they were awesome.

"I think I understand what he invented, and I don;t want to down play it, but it seems pretty obvious once you know nano tubes and antibodies. I get the feeling we are gonna find out later, this has been done. Even if so, it's great for a 15 year old to do it, and to be so driven."

It is pretty obvious once you put the pieces together, but then so are a lot of great inventions. (The light bulb comes to mind. Everybody knew that when you heated things to high temperatures they would glow, and everybody knew you could heat materials with electricity, and everybody knew you needing an oxidizing atmosphere to make things burn; the genius was realizing that a glowing thing in a vacuum -- or a non-reactive atmosphere -- would glow for a long time without burning out.)

His earlier projects were pretty brilliant too. It won't be long at all before this charming kid is an evil One Percenter. Such a shame.

Son of a bitch, I actually teared up as he ascended the stage. What an example of the anti-moron of today. 100% delightful and encouraging. My 14-year old daughter watched in amazement as well. Fan-fucking-tastic.

As for parental help, as I've said, my father was a great one for, "Look it up".

As for figuring things out, I guess we all do that to one degree or another, but this kid sees possibilities that don't occur to most people.

Perhaps some of the difference comes from the "figure it out" verses "look it up" approach. When you look something up, you're accepting the standard "approved" or published answer. When you figure it out on your own, you learn a lot more because you're actively seeking the answer, trying new approaches and, in this example, learning the scientific method.

Hopefully, we'll hear more from him.

I suspect we will. Something tells me this young man is going places. His motivation (having an uncle die of pancreatic cancer) may have resulted in something that will save thousands of lives every year. Using the same approach, it could revolutionize the early detection of many types of cancer. His approach is so simple and inexpensive that it might be part of a standard physical within a few years. Who know, perhaps existing detection techniques like mammograms will be largely obsolete.

This story really hits home with me. One of my brothers died of lymphoma last year. It had been misdiagnosed for a long time and by the time it was diagnosed, it had spread throughout his body. He died less than 9 months later. A discovery like this one, adapted to detect lymphoma, might've saved his life.

The kids at this event are the kids who will change the world. I hope they get the chance to do it. In reference to yesterday's thread about education this is a real lesson about how kids learn. Yes, we're talking about a healthy, brilliant, motivated, kid with parents who provided him with opportunities, but the fact is those opportunities owe very little to government intervention in his life, and everything to the freedom to take advantage of opportunities.

2) Now I'm gonna be a jerk but this was so obvious to me that I'm surprised no one else mentioned this: I realized as I watched him run down the aisle that I can't recall the last time I saw a more effeminate young man, nttawwt, although his explanation was great.

If I'm understanding the science, and I think I am, then as long as the tumor secretes a protein marker, then the technique should work. Even if the there is no specific marker, but maybe three or four proteins that are characteristic, it should still work, because then you just test the sample for identifying set. Even if he can't make a single strip that will test for multiple proteins at the same time, the strips for each individual protein will be cheap enough to run individually.

And since it's the same basic mechanism as the standard diabetes blood sugar test, one modest blood sample should be good for at least 40 individual tests. This really is a breakthrough.

Tiger, considering the number of lives this young man's invention will save, he could wear and evening gown and a fruit basket on his head and I will call him "Sir" and beat the crap out of anyone who gives him crap in my presence.

Coming up with this has to be someone's full time paid job. Probably a number of grants have been given to do just this very thing. I think those people should at least get a participation trophy. Think about their self esteem. What this kid did to them was very selfish, and cruel.

One of the commenters in that article pointed out that a similar technique is used to determine if toxins are in the environment. So the patent may or may not get off the ground depending on how it all plays out.

But in any event this is a serious invention and I applaud this young man. His invention might save my life. Stranger things have happened.

You know -- like the comments in the discussion below about the crazy enviros eliminating the human problem -- we have people out there who connect the dots and find new answers. I love people who think the way he does about so many different things.

Also, if it were already known, what the heck have we been doing the past 25 - 50 years? Yes, a similar discovery was described in a chemistry journal but his application is in the life sciences.

If this is what it appears to be, this young man has saved many lives.

My sister-in-law died of pancreatic cancer which by the time they found it was too far advanced to do a Whipple surgical procedure. She was in an experimental drug study through Sloan Kettering and lived well past what was expected.

Pretty amazing when I think about what I was doing at 15. But did I hear him say his process is 26,000X more expensive? That can't be right.

And I was disappointed to hear him emphasize that he had patented his process. Nice that it's patentable, I hope he makes a boatload of money, but there's something distasteful about the rush to lock up ideas.

There's no chance whatsoever that he uses his patent to "lock up" his idea. He'll license it to the bidder of his (and his parents') choosing. Whether it's the high bidder or a lower bidder, the idea will be put into production.Remember what his inspiration for this project was.

Also, winning patent approval establishes the basis for his claim that it was his own, innovative idea. Even in this thread questions were raised about that early on.

There is no downside to his patenting his idea that I can see. And upon reflection, I wouldn't be surprised in the least if every kid in this competition was advised to do that prior to entering.

Elon Musk has yet to submit a patent for the collection of innovations that resulted in the Dragon spaceship supplying the International Space Station. He doesn't want to give the Chinese any more help than he has to.

No doubt he could never have done it without the infrastructure we have and support of his parent and The People.

Thing is... inventing this IS HIM DOING THE CONTRIBUTION IN RETURN PART. That part is taken care of, done, completed! And as he goes forward, if it is put into production and he gets money for it, THOSE transactionS on both sides of getting and giving back benefits will also be completed.

That's ok, Tiger, I thought he came across as a Miss America pageant-winner myself.

...And not just effeminate, but effete. After all, who runs down the aisle literally shrieking & flapping his hands, holding both hands to his chest as if he can't breathe, then falls to his knees in classic "psycho Tom Cruise" style?

Now I'm gonna be a jerk but this was so obvious to me that I'm surprised no one else mentioned this: I realized as I watched him run down the aisle that I can't recall the last time I saw a more effeminate young man,...

Me too - which is the only reason it's here. Ann's attempting to manipulate us, which I resent, and makes me want to slap the kid and scream, "Close your fucking mouth!"

Mark,

Tiger, considering the number of lives this young man's invention will save, he could wear and evening gown and a fruit basket on his head and I will call him "Sir" and beat the crap out of anyone who gives him crap in my presence.

He shows every sign of being a gift to humanity. Don't be a putz.

What a moron. Don't try to manipulate me and I'll attempt resisting, but the fact of the matter is, there are 300 million people in this country and the 2% who are gay have been shoved down my throat for the last few decades and I'm sick of it. Those behind that manipulation are the putzs - blame Ann. That - all by itself - is ruder than anything I say (ask Miss Manners). I don't need anyone to tell me how to feel about gays, the environment, or my health, and I want everyone to shut-the-fuck-up about them, stop trying to cultishly manipulate me, and let me live my life. Your peer pressure won't work here. As this thread shows, it only works on the weak.

I don't know what you are, tough guy, but I'm a man and enjoying being toyed with ain't part of that equation.

Ann thinks she's smart - she ain't that fucking smart. She's a silly feminist. The reason for divorces, unwanted children, and the general breakdown of society - partially so she can bear hug every swish on the planet. Well - like this kid - I'm also the recipient of her efforts. Mean ol' black troubled asshole Crack:

How do you like her work?

She couldn't make me enjoy this for anything - and, if you tried to "beat the crap" out of me, I'd enjoy taking you down for it.

Ain't NOTHING funnier than a feminized male losing the fight for males being feminized.

The basic elements of the idea are not that new, but the combination is novel. It's the orders of magnitude increase in sensitivity that really surprises. This goes way beyond pancreatic cancer to any disease with a defined circulating protein marker. I expect to see it as a replacement for the PSA test (which is very poor), and as a screen for colon and breast cancer. Awesome.

It's absolutely brilliant, of course, that a 15 year old managed to pull this off. And since this is all run by Intel, I'm sure they did their homework, but ... this technique sounds familiar to me already. I could have sworn it had already been done by someone. Not to take anything away from the kid, who clearly put a lot of time and effort into it. At fifteen, no less. I wonder about a patent, though. Best of luck to him.

Yeah, the kid is effiminate. He also came up with a great idea. I'm guessing he won the contest because of the idea and not because of teh gay.

He does need to learn to speak without inflecting upwards at the end of declarative sentences. But age will teach him that.

The inflections are definitely a little annoying, but did you notice the lack of other verbal ticks? I counted one brief "um" and that was it. He did throw in an "and stuff" near the end, but he was completely lacking in "uh"s, "like"s, "you know"s, long pauses, grunts and similar tricks to gain time to express a thought. (Unlike our current POTUS, whose speech is lettered with such effluvia.) A very, very sharp mind behind that voice.